A Complicated Farewell
by InsightfulMagician
Summary: mastermind!AU; Kirigiri should have known that trust would have been her downfall. If only she could hate him for his betrayal...


There are some who would say that the hormones rushing through your brain, accomplishing all the necessary tasks of survival, are completely separate from what one would call "the soul" or one's personality. In other words, how your brain reacts to something is completely separate from your personal thoughts on the matter.

And, indeed, those people might say that their theory would be proven with how Kirigiri Kyouko reacted to seeing her face, so excruciatingly animated on that slot-machine, steadily falling into place to nominate her as the class's vote for being the mastermind. Her whole perception of the event, thanks to her brain, was slow and detailed, though had she a say in the matter, she would pray that her sentencing would be over in a second. Yet her body computed it slowly, as it always does when examining something that means danger or death, and although she knew her doom by the first slot's stoppage, the other two slots confirmed it as they slowed for what seemed like an eternity.

Even worse, Kirigiri couldn't blame a single person in the room. She was always suspicious, never speaking unless about a murder, touching corpses without the slightest reserve, even having a key in her possession that gave her access to all of her classmates' rooms. How could they not suspect her for after such a résumé of detachment and control over the situation? She couldn't even bring herself to hate Naegi, who revealed to everyone the fact that she held a skeleton key for the entire school. After all, they were in a courtroom. How could he have expected getting the correct result if he kept secrets from everyone else? And he wasn't a mind-reader. He couldn't have known what she was attempting to do.

Kyouko took in a breath and kept her composure, steeling all the resolve she had. It was natural it would end up this way. Panicking would accomplish nothing: it wouldn't weaken Monobear's grip; it wouldn't reveal the killer; it wouldn't save her from her fate— nothing would.

Yet what followed would be, in Kirigiri's eyes, pure evidence that the mind and soul are not separate bodies, as the next words spoken were worth absolutely nothing to the grey matter between her ears, yet meant the apocalypse and self-destruction of Kirigiri Kyouko. As a matter of fact, the words meant nothing in and of themselves: the voice was what carried all of its weight.

"Thank you so much, everyone!"

It was a male voice, though it was certainly feminine, that held an unsettling tone of laughter. Before that moment, it was always filled with caution and doubt, but always for benevolent reasons. It used to be one of honesty and normality. It was just the voice of a high school boy, normal as could be, only noticeable from his kindness, concern for others, and righteous pursuit of the truth.

"I would like to thank you all for playing my game of mutual killing. You've gotten very far, I must admit! Almost as far as the last group! You see, they were able to make it to four remaining players and while that's more impressive than what we have here, I must say that all the preparations put into this little game were _more_ than worthwhile."

Kirigiri refused to turn. Not only because she refused to believe, but because time had lost its sense in her mind. Words came out all at once and slowly, silently and in an explosive shout that vibrated in her mind. Her stomach felt sick and her brain pounded and ached. She felt like she was going to throw up. She had expected Monobear to announce the error of everyone's decision yet in instantaneous hindsight she feverishly called herself an idiot for not thinking that the mastermind would take the perfect opportunity to introduce himself.

Eventually, she gave into her damnable curiosity. She wanted it to be a prank on Monobear's behalf. Perhaps it would be a voice recorder of some kind! He's certainly had stranger technology at his expense. Just a cruel joke to kick Kirigiri in her moment of terror. Yet the face that awaited her as she looked back at the courtroom impaled her and told her that she was wrong, wrong, _wrong_.

Naegi Makoto, arms crossed and face lit up with a triumphant smirk, nodded at Kirigiri the moment she laid eyes on him. He knew all too well what she was thinking, and in response to the cacophony of curses and weeping and denying blabbering that caged itself in her mind, he could only reply, 'yes'. After taking in her expression with naked ecstasy, he sighed, as though having just finished a luxurious bath, and shouldered off his black uniform, slinging it over his shoulders. He then proceeded to walk towards Monobear.

Surprisingly, Hagakure was the first to break the terrible silence. "N-Naegi-chi. You're joking, right? There's no way you, of all people, could be the killer. Kirigiri-chi was… the one." At this point, he only stuttered phrases and 'evidence' that were tossed around only minutes ago during the trial. "Sh- She had a key to all of our rooms! She lied to us all during the court case?"

Naegi ignored the stuttering and didn't even bother looking at him as he handed his shirt to Monobear. "Joking? Surely, you've picked up by now that I'm not one to joke around about something this serious." He sighed. "And here I thought all of that time spent pretending to care for you people might have had _some _extra worth. Maybe, I thought, you would actually learn something about me. No, Hagakure-san. I don't joke about such things; I never have and I never will."

"It's true!" Monobear chimed in. "I try to get Master Naegi to lighten up aaaaaall the time, especially before a trial starts!" He then kicked the dirt in a mocking act of embarrassment. "But he never wants to play with me…"

Naegi scoffed and hoisted Monobear up in his arms. "Don't tell lies to these nice people, Monobear: your nose might grow! Setting up this whole game of mutual killing _was _playing for you, just as much as it was for me." He ruffled the felt fur on the top of the bear's head. "That's why I'm so glad I took the time to learn that autonomic programming for you! Having your despicable mug around has been a highlight of this whole adventure."

Monobear holds his cheeks with his stumpy hands, prolonging the disgusting performance. "Thump-thump! The cold-hearted master shows his true feelings at last!"

And the laughter that followed disgusted every other man and woman in the room: not because it was sinister but because of its _innocence_. It wasn't the conceited laughter of an evil mastermind and its servant, but the jovial laughter of two friends telling a joke, as if they had just pulled a measly prank. Had Kirigiri been coherent, she would have guessed that a prank is exactly what they considered this game to be. Yet she was anything but coherent at the moment. She stared at them, revolted and confused. Naegi was laughing with Monobear. He was holding it and hugging it like a pet. He was laughing with the monster that killed Leon, Junko, Mondo and Celes, and inadvertently killed Sakura, Chihiro, Hifumi, Kiyotaka and Sayaka.

As her name flashed by Kirigiri's mind, her disgust had finally affected her on a physical level, to the point of her covering her mouth to stop from vomiting. She _actually comforted him about Maizono's death_. What a fool she was! She _trusted_ him! She believed that of all the people in this god-forsaken school, he was the one to trust. He was so innocent and kind and honest, yet he had been playing her since the first victim, garnering sympathy and unwarranted trust from the very beginning. She should have seen such perfection as nothing but a ploy to hurt her.

Naegi noticed her reaction and smiled. It might have been the amplified feelings of betrayal making her delusional, but she could have sworn that she saw him lick his lips before speaking again. "It seems like Kirigiri-san wants to get on with the execution, Monobear. We'll have to celebrate later, I'm afraid. But in the meantime, would you mind getting me my clothes? I don't want to start without them."

"Roger!"Monobear exclaimed. He hopped from Naegi's arms and, with a brief salute, he ran to the elevator, leaving the students behind, silence reigning with only the muffled whirring mechanics of the elevator to challenge it.

After a minute, her initial shock of the betrayal was cauterized and Kirigiri managed to choke out the one word that was at her mind's forefront:

"… _Why?_"

Naegi rolled his eyes, undoubtedly expecting such a cliché question. "Monobear didn't lie to you: my motive for creating this game is to bring despair, not only to the fifteen of us, but to the world. Nothing more, nothing less.

"As for why I've come to be like this, well…" He scratched his head, trying to find the right words. "I was born to give despair. An average boy, with an overachieving little sister and loving yet distant parents, meeting mediocrity wherever he went. Of course, I had an affinity for despair since birth, long before such problems registered to me. But I have to say, a dull and average life like that _would _help such despair grow, now wouldn't it? After all, our country loves to dote over the special and the elite, the talented and the noticeable. Because certain people don't fit their criteria of importance, we have to suffer while they get coddled and fed money and privilege, only to pass on those rewards to the _next _generation of 'special' people." He chuckled bitterly. "Believe me, I didn't feel guilty in the least when I made this academy crumble. And the despair the world felt when they saw this beacon of hope collapse was a nice bonus too, of course."

Naegi paced toward Kirigiri, who couldn't even muster the strength to back away. He stopped a foot short and looked at her with a look that could only be described as conflicted. "But I must admit, Kirigiri-san: out of everything this game has offered me, you're what has gotten me the closest to feeling regret." His eyes smoldered as he glanced over Kirigiri's body, to which she instinctively shuddered. "… Your skin is probably the best thing about you, Kirigiri-san. That pale, porcelain skin of yours— it matches your hair, you know. That and the face you always have. That insufferable stolid face of yours, always immovable and guarded."

Naegi lunged forward and gripped Kirigiri by the neck, causing pain but not impeding her breathing. She didn't bother resisting. What good would it have done? He probably was counting on her fighting back, just for him to smack her back down. If there was any way left for her to fight back, it would be to do just the opposite of what he wanted. "I just want to _bruise_ and _batter_ it and splatter blood on that perfect skin of yours until that mask crumbles and gives in to pure despair."

He moved one hand to grip tightly on her hair and she could hear him breathe heavily. His eyes showed nothing but depraved madness and an animal hunger. Whether that hunger was of despair or sexual desires or some shameless combination of both, Kirigiri couldn't fathom a guess. "Not a day goes by where I see that face and don't dream of breaking it in every way possible." He shuddered. "It's a favorite fantasy of mine."

At this point, Togami's disgust had apparently accumulated to words as well. He crossed his arms and glared at Naegi with as much hate he could muster, hiding the bitterness of his betrayal. "I'm rather disappointed with the mastermind being some perverted psychopath. I was expecting you to be something above the level of some hobbyist like Genocider Syo."

Naegi cocked his head to the side, not moving the rest of his body an inch off of Kirigiri's. "And yet I'll end up standing over her corpse, as well as yours. I even managed to fool the sharp-witted Byakuya Togami." He gave a smile that went against everything Naegi had pretended to be and chilled both Togami and Kirigiri to the bone. "Not too bad for a perverted psychopath, right?"

"Standing over my corpse?" Genocider Syo piped up. "Hell no!"

She jumped off of the balcony, pulling out her scissors as she fell, and brandished her weapons in a dynamic pose. "Sooooo you're the mastermind: congratulations, you managed to turn me on slightly more than your old boring self could! But I'll be damned in hell if I get killed by a little shrimp like Ma-kun!"

And with that, she sprinted forward, giving practice slashes at the air before her as she ran. Makoto let Kirigiri go and, taking his sweet time, snapped his fingers.

_RA-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT!_

A machine gun mounted on the wall riddled the school-girl's figure with bullets. No one but Naegi knew whether the gun was something they just didn't notice or if it had appeared out of the wall, certainly not out of the question in this madhouse. A horrific sound of gunfire, the collisions of lead and metal and the sickening thuds of bullets hitting flesh and bone filled the room. After thirty seconds of gunfire, long after the body of Fukawa Touko fell lifeless to the ground, the Gatling gun ceased firing, and all was silent again. Silent, other than Naegi's careless footsteps.

He sauntered over to Fukawa's corpse, which lay on its back staring vacantly at the courtroom's high ceiling. When he approached, he crouched down and held the girl's small chin between his fingers. "I forgot to tell you this — I should have told you as soon as this charade ended — but garbage like you will never, _ever_ have the right to refer to me as 'Ma-kun'."

Naegi let go of her chin and, with a dull thud, the corpse's head hit the ground. With a blink of his eyes, all of what little thoughts and feelings he had left regarding Fukawa Touko were erased. After all, she was just a dead piece of meat now.

But Togami Byakuya had no such callousness. "You son of a bitch!" He snarled. Like Fukawa, Togami jumped from his seat and charged at Naegi, still towering over his former comrade's corpse.

"**STOP!**" Naegi roared. The sheer authority of his voice, unheard of for Naegi, made Togami freeze in his tracks. "My patience is wearing thin from all of these insurgences. I'm flattered that you want to romantically charge at me and sacrifice yourself on behalf of looking cool, but enough is enough. If one more classmate tries to play hero or psychopath or whatever vigilante whose goal is to kill me, _I WILL GUN DOWN EVERY LAST FUCKING ONE OF YOU THE SECOND YOU MOVE AN INCH_."[]

It took Togami a moment for him to form a reply. "And why the hell should we care if you kill us right now? You're going to do it anyways, aren't you? Isn't it better to die like this than from some twisted little execution you hatched up for us?"

In an instant, Naegi's rage subsided for a faux moment of pondering as he stroked his chin in thought. "Oh, yes. Good point. I suppose it would be better to do this, then, wouldn't it?"

And with another snap of his fingers, elastic robotic arms — much like the one that snared Leon — grabbed every student before they could even respond. They all struggled against the cold, metallic claws that held them as they were whisked toward the post that held Leon as he was executed, just a few days ago: all except for Kirigiri.

From the moment Naegi approached her, Kirigiri had focused her gaze on a sole spot on the ground, never taking her eyes from it. It was only when she was lifted by the claws that she momentarily felt annoyed by how difficult it was to keep track of that spot due to her elevation changing. The entire time she stared, Kirigiri kept note of everything that happened and was disgusted with how she mentally reacted to them. Even after he betrayed them all and even as he killed her classmate, she couldn't help but feel… attracted.

She hated him, certainly. The moment he spoke after the announcement of her execution, she had, first and foremost, decided that she hated Naegi Makoto with every fiber of her being. He betrayed her, killed her, caused countless people to die, and caused them all to suffer emotionally before they died. So when she felt aroused at hearing Naegi be so commanding and in charge, seeing him talk so condescendingly to everyone and even muttering his fantasies of beating her and crushing her spirit, Kirigiri felt deeply ashamed of letting it affect her in such a way. Yet the shame only seemed to add itself to her hidden excitement toward the whole matter until she found herself shivering from a whirl of emotions she couldn't even begin to understand. She remained in the courtroom as the others were bound to the pole. She was, after all, the first to be executed. Monobear, perfectly timing his return, waddled into the courtroom with a pile of folded garments, topped by a gaudy crown, in his arms.

He and Naegi exchanged pleasantries and within a few moments, Naegi was clothed and ready for the execution. He kept his black pants but replaced his black loafers with white dress shoes, his green hoodie with a half-black-half-white hoodie — this hoodie brandishing the Monobear insignia in crimson red — and his normal black academy dress shirt with a similar half-black-half-white dress shirt, though this one's colors were on opposite sides than those of his hoodie. He wore the hood over his head, revealing it to have a disgustingly cute Monobear face printed on it — even going so far as having a nose and ears professionally stitched on it — and atop the hood sat the gaudy crown.

He strolled to Kirigiri once again and, abruptly, Naegi clapped his hands. "Well, then! I suppose we shouldn't stretch this out much longer. Though it might seem like lessening the pay-off for all of this hard work, I'm not one to just stand around and brag. I'd rather get right to the _results_."

Naegi paused for a moment. Kirigiri had no idea why. His breathing was uneven; perhaps he was getting "excited" again. He eventually put a finger underneath her chin and tilted her head up. Despite Kirigiri's attempts, their eyes met and Kirigiri could see something that, at long last, brought her to tears. It was the eyes of the boy she loved, the Naegi Makoto she met in that entrance hall in front of the vault he painstakingly placed that sealed their fate. It was the Naegi Makoto who flustered her — though she managed to ride it off as a joke — and who she found to enjoy flustering in return. It was a pair of lime-green eyes that radiated with something she thought was naïveté and honesty, but now she couldn't fathom what such an ugly soul could possess that could be so beautiful.

His voice lowered to a husky whisper. "I love you, Kyouko. I always will: even when you're dead; even if you hate me. It's because I know you so well that I accept that, and why I won't ask you to join my side. I know you… too well. I know that we're the pinnacles of two beautiful things that come from completely different worlds. It's because I know you so well, that I want to kill you first: so you won't see your friends die anymore; and so you won't have to see my disgusting face anymore."

He held her ears and leaned forward, giving her a brief kiss before pulling back. The tears in his eyes obscured the view of the innocent teenage boy leaving the body of Naegi Makoto, forever. "Besides… to kill you… that would be true despair for me, wouldn't it? I can barely contain how miserable I am."

Kirigiri only sobbed. She couldn't speak. She felt as though she was choking on her own throat, as if some detestable parasite was wriggling around in her lungs to prevent her from saying what she wanted, from saying _something_ to him before she died. She knew she would cry ever since she heard Naegi's voice after her execution's announcement, but she at least wanted to cry quietly and with dignity. Yet no such thing happened. If she hated him, and nothing more, she would have. Hating is easy to do silently. Yet her emotions, both toward herself and to him, kept her from the stability she wanted. She cried because they could have been so much more, they _deserved_ to be so much more. She cursed him, cursed herself, cursed everyone and everything that interacted with Naegi that turned him this way and everyone and everything that interacted with her that had made her such a _fool_.

Because her vision was blurred and perception weakened, Kirigiri could only tell that Naegi was walking away from her because of the sound of his dress shoes tapping on the polished tile floor. She then felt the sensation of moving quickly through the air, courtesy of the claw that held her captive. The next few moments were insignificant to her: being strapped to a chair of some sort; blurred visions of some papers; the thudding of some machinery in the back, no doubt the means of her death. So she would be crushed. Merciful, for someone so keen on despair. Yet the thudding sounds were at the back of her mind and the sight of the papers was only registered for a moment as she lifted her head to focus on the only thing that mattered. Her hands were free, so she wiped away her tears and looked at him, for one last time. She wanted to see Naegi Makoto one last time.

Yet she was met with nothing but the horrified faces of her classmates and the cold, alien smile of Despair Academy's mastermind.


End file.
